The sun sets outside the wire of a remote outpost in Iraq’s Diyala province, where fighting between U.S. forces and insurgents has flared since President Bush ordered more reinforcements to the country in January. The surge in forces, which was meant to bolster security in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, sent insurgents flooding into Diyala, where daily clashes with U.S. troops are now routine. (Drew Brown / S&S)
The sun sets outside the wire of a remote outpost in Iraq’s Diyala province, where fighting between U.S. forces and insurgents has flared since President Bush ordered more reinforcements to the country in January. The surge in forces, which was meant to bolster security in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, sent insurgents flooding into Diyala, where daily clashes with U.S. troops are now routine. (Drew Brown / S&S)
Combat leaders with the 1-12th Combined Arms Battalion confer before troops begin searching house to house during a midnight raid on the village of Nahir Shallub for weapons and information on insurgents. Information from a previous raid that freed 42 kidnapped Iraqi men being held by al Qaida in a nearby village suggested that more secret prisons could be in the area. No prisoners were found in Nahir Shallub. (Drew Brown / S&S)
U.S. soldiers with the 1-12th Combined Arms Battalion and Iraqi army troops search a house during a midnight raid in the village of Nahir Shallub, in Iraq’s Diyala province. (Drew Brown / S&S)
U.S. soldiers with the 1-12th Combined Arms Battalion and Iraqi troops question several men during a midnight raid on the village of Nahir Shallub. (Drew Brown / S&S)
Capt. Alex Rivera, 39, of Columbus, Ga., confirms his location on a map during a raid on the village of Nahir Shallub, in Iraq’s Diyala province. (Drew Brown / S&S)
NAHIR SHALLUB, Iraq — Mortar flares fall slowly through the midnight sky, casting an eerie glow over the desert scrub as a group of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers move toward a village marked by the tall silhouettes of date palms in the distance.
There’s no moon; the village sleeps, wrapped in darkness. Electric lights from a nearby town shimmer on the horizon, giving off a weak light that makes the ground glow in places. Dogs howl furiously as the soldiers approach. Rotor blades thump loudly as helicopters circle overhead.
A handful of officers and sergeants from Company C, 1st Cavalry Division’s 1-12th Combined Arms Battalion gather briefly in the first house they encounter to consult their maps. One of them barks out a few sharp commands that are echoed quickly down the line. The soldiers begin moving out.
A similar raid just a week earlier by the 1-12th’s Company D freed 42 Iraqi men who had been kidnapped by al-Qaida fighters and held in a nearby village in Diyala province, where some of the heaviest fighting in Iraq has occurred in recent months.
The men told U.S. troops they believed al-Qaida had kidnapped them in an effort to either coerce or convert them to their cause. Information collected during the operation suggested that insurgents might be holding people in other secret locations, including Nahir Shallub.
There are only a few roads into the area, and because the threat of bombs is high, the troops have been flown in by Black Hawk helicopters in an air assault mission that hearkens back to the 1st Cav’s days as an airmobile unit in Vietnam.
U.S. and Iraqi troops approach a house, startling a family that has been sleeping on wooden beds pulled outside to take advantage of the cool night air. At only 89 degrees, it’s a welcome respite from Iraq’s stifling summer, where temperatures routinely soar to 115 degrees and above.
A team led by Sgt. Antwon Monroe, 30, of Columbus, Ga., searches the house but finds nothing. The Iraqis don’t protest, as if they’ve gone through the routine countless times before. A man says “thank you” as they leave.
The soldiers search another house while a couple of Iraqi troops look inside a mosque. A man chuckles in a tired voice as the soldiers lift the covers on a bed in his yard. “My baby,” he says, in English. A woman lies quietly under a mosquito net.
A flatbed “bongo” truck is parked outside the house. Sgt. First Class Michael Davenport, 36, of Abingdon, Va., orders the man to get the keys and open it.
Davenport asks if the man has any weapons. No, he answers. Has he seen any strangers around town, any al-Qaida? Again, no. “Lalalalala,” the man says, shaking his head and brushing his hands together, as if wiping them off.
“Lalalalala don’t tell me [expletive],” Davenport says. He tells his translator, a Sudanese man who calls himself Mickey, to ask if the man makes a lot of money in his job.
“Tell him he can make a lot more money tonight if he tells me where there are weapons in this town,” Davenport says.
“I don’t know anything,” the man says. Davenport asks if anyone in the village will shoot at him if he and his troops walk through it. “No, no, no,” the man says. Davenport asks if the man is Sunni or Shiite. The man replies that he is Sunni, but that in this town Sunnis and Shiites live together peacefully.
“There are no bad people here,” he says. “The Americans come here many times before, but find nothing.”
And so it goes, for the next three hours, as the soldiers search one house and the next. By this point, with flashlights slicing through the dark and with every dog in the village barking, all semblance of tactical surprise is gone.
“It’s a crapshoot,” says Capt. Alex Rivera, 39, of Columbus, Ga., a former 1-75th Ranger sergeant now on his second tour in Iraq. “Sometimes you hit it big, sometimes you don’t.”
“But as long as we exfil(trate) with nobody hurt, then that’s good,” he says.
The soldiers search more than two dozen houses and the reactions from villagers are almost all the same. As the troops approach some dwellings, the men are already sitting together, waiting for their arrival. At others, they feign sleep until soldiers roust them from their beds.
The Black Hawks return after about three hours to pick up the raiders. Two cooks at a kitchen at a small outpost that’s served as a staging area serve steaming fried eggs, hash browns and bacon to the tired and dirty troops. It’s past 8 a.m. before they roll back to base where hot showers and sleep await.
